Added: 4 years ago
From: itekisan
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  • Very good tutorial on German pronunciation - I've recommended it to a American friend, who just starts to learn German!

  • Excited to be learning such an awesome language! :D

  • I've been studying German by myself...it isn't easy, but I really want to learn it. I use a book called "Teach yourself German" and there are audios too. Do you know this book? I think it's good to beginning...and I liked a lot your video! Beautiful pronunciation!

  • @ElectraLara I don't know any books or other material teaching German. I do not work as a teacher. An being German myself, I have lots of other language homelearning courses, but not German. ;)

  • Comment removed

  • Danke!

  • Thank you so much. This is incredibly helpful! I really, really appreciate that you went through the time and effort to make this. I'm trying to teach myself German before I take any formal classes, and this is soooo helpful! So... Thanks again!

  • Wow, the more I watch the more I see that the German R (mostly) are somehow like the French R.... but in German there's the trill...

  • you talk so fast that camera of yours is unable to catch up with you

  • wow this is great thanks!

  • Vielen danke! Ich hat gebraucht ein gut helfe!

  • Finally a decent video ..... THANKS!

  • Super video, thanks!

  • I dont know german and would like to learn. Could some one let me know what is the best way to learn german quickly.

  • @kkumarx 1. Listen only to Rammstein and Kraftwerk 2. Watch all your movies and Sitcoms completly in German ( WITHOUT SUBTITLES) 3. Play all your videogames in German ! 4. Go into german teamspeak servers and just try to talk with the german people there .  5. PROFIT

  • very useful

  • very helpful :)

  • this video was very useful :) thanks for uploading. 

  • did u know that german and english can be very similar?? check my 5 th lesson on my channel to find out!

  • Thank you very much.

  • Would you recommend me a book with cd so I can learn? Can you recommend a good one for me to buy? We at home need to learn very soon ... Pls respond me thank youu

  • @svmyle I can't recommend one, since I am a native German speaker and thus don't know any learning materials for those who wish to learn German as an adult. But I hope someone else here can help you.

  • for the r sound you can explain use of gargling sound to make the sound clear

    like wise for ch in auch you can use the snoring expample

    both sounds can be extended like the sss, zzz and rrr (english version) sound and unlike b t p where you cannot say bbbb or tttt or pppp in one breath.

  • @mohammadmiraei man I need help with the freaking r sound. I had no problem with the ch as I am a native spanish speaker and spanish does have the ch sound like in 'auch', but that goddamn 'r' sound. I have a lot of trouble with all gutural sounds, I mean, it's like a vibration or something? How did you manage to get that sound right?

  • @maxprezas92 you can have some water, hold your head up and gargle. you will realise the sound and it is continuous, just like the spanish r. Try it. At least you get the sound with water

    Keep practicing and then do it without water. It should work

  • I'm subscribing.

    He explains all of this so well.

    Thank you VERY much.

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  • lange is my last name, you can spell it in german as 'lang' or 'lange', meaning 'long' (:

  • Are you from Germany or the UK? if you don't may me asking. have you ever heard of the RPG Gothic? I was thinking about getting the German versions of gothic 1 and 2. to get use to the way it flows when spoken. as I start to restudy German, after 5 years of not studying it. Does that sound like a good to you or something you would recommand as im from the states, and never get a chance to hear it day in or day out.

  • @lutdabs I'm German, and have so far never been to any English-speaking country. Playing games in the language you learn is a really good idea. I also do it often. For instance, I played Fahrenheit first in English, then again in Italian. Also I often watch DVDs in various languages (English, Italian, French, Swedish, Japanese), sometimes with, sometimes without subtitles. You can also experiment with mixing your native with the foreign language, ie English subs, German audio or vice versa.

  • @itekisan Wow thats Very Great! Your English is better than most people I know (In the Detroit area). You speak it so well, If I didn't know any better I would had assumed you were from the UK. Thanks for the ideas! =) Have a great evening

  • @lutdabs Thanks for the compliments. :) It's interesting though how differently people judge accents. Some like you say I sound British, some say I sound Australian (or "Strayan", if that suits it better *g*), some say I do in fact sound German anyway. And a rather nitpicky chat friend from California very often points out that I make errors in English that a native speaker hardly would do.

    Have a great evening, too!

  • @itekisan mmmm just thought about it, it's different when you're chatting with someone and different when you're writting someone or making a video, cause you have time to make corrections, and reverse, but when you're chatting with someone it's an another story, but from I Seen, you speak better English than my Manager (who's American) so it's like 10 o'clock over there, now in Deutschland? how was your day? just made many mistakes myself lol, people on my facebooklist make many more :)

  • I love that I'm Scottish and so can easily make the clearing my throat sound :)haha

  • @sarahbearno1 Yeah, I was really surprised when in one episode of the Highlander tv series, they suddenly pronounce a totally German-sounding "ach"... then I learned this is some feature of Scottish.

  • Zentrum with Z not C ;)

  • @DerDussel97 Yeah, it's today almost always written this way. However, in older books and documents, ads, movies etc you will find it still written with C. Also some marketing schemes play with these old writings, mostly to make the brand look a bit more "exclusive" and posh.

  • To pronounce the 'eu' sound do i use my tongue to help produce the sound or my jaw?

  • @Sonnelicht87 Erm, it's the same diphthong as in "Roy". And I'd say it's more the tongue.

  • I really hope you're a teacher in real life because you would be amazing at it!

  • you are awesome

  • How is "Hause" "heaute" and "eine" pronounced?

  • vielen dank!

  • is it true in german schools you start learning english in 3rd school?

  • @SteezySkater72 yep, at least i did

  • @SteezySkater72 I don't know, I'm long out of school and have no kids. I grew up in East Germany (GDR), there we started with Russian in the 5th grade and with English in 7th grade. But it is possible, that today pupils get to learn their first foreign language already in the 3rd grade. However, English is not compulsory. It is chosen by most, though, for pracrical reasons. Other commonly learned languages are French and Spanish.

  • Thank-you!

    I'm learning German with Rosetta Stone. It's great but obviously can't pin point exactly what I'm pronouncing the wrong way or indeed tell me how to correct it. So thanks so much, this video has really helped. :)

  • At 2:53 I always had the question of how this letter was pronounced, because it looks like the greek β (beta) when written. But as I see it doesn't have to do anything with b.

  • @hrbear ß is called "Eszet" (sz) or "Scharf-s" (sharp-s) in german. It's a transliteration for "sz". It's s spoken very sharp. like the sound of a snake. ;)

    You can often replace ß with ss in the written language (indeed, swiss do that very often), but I find this more or less wrong, because (depending on the word) "ss" is not the same as "ß".

  • @hrbear Actually the ß is a ligature combing an old German "long S" and the old German "Z", therefore being called "es-zett". However, where the letter is missing or cannot be used, it is replaced with "ss" instead of "sz". Also, it is used as if it was a (lower-case only) letter in modern German.

  • danke!

  • -_- The written language is so much easier... I speak English and I thought German would be easy but even Esperanto is so much easier to pronounce and I just started learning today, yet I have been learning German for months.

    oh yeah, how the heck do you pronounce this word? I have heard it so many times but I can't do it: Lehrerin. I can pronounce Wissenschaflter, which looks way longer and harder but I can't get the weird sound in "Lehrerin" the hrer part

  • @OmgYumMusic Hmm... "Lehrerin"... Start with Lehr (sound like English "lair"), then add a short German A at the end and you have Lehrer. ("er" at the end of words often is pronounced like a short A or O in spoken German, not officially, but most people do it that way). And then add ad the "rin".

  • @OmgYumMusic I don't take a class at all, and I just started speaking with a native regularly and I have found out that the grammar is very im Takt... uhh... very strict... I find spoken language easier than written language... I've only been studying German for 4 months, though.

  • When you say "Vater" it sounded like "farter" hehehehe

  • the germans pronounce all the letters, not the french. that's why they more understand the south french accent that the north french. is it true ? and the pronounciation of the letters look like the french pronounciation, but not the u, and other letter. do you think like me ?

  • @freoltic Yes the French and German language pronounce many letters the same way. An example where a consonant is very different is the J. French uses it for a voiced SH (then usually transcribed as ZH), in German it stands for the Y (redundandly, as we also have the Y with the very same sound). French has many nasal sounds, and uses a wide array of letter combinations for them, also for historical reasons, many letters are not pronounced. English has a similar history, but dropped more letters.

  • "Z" always sounds "TS" in German.

  • Excellent

  • THIS IS VERY USEFUL!!!!!THANKS!!!!

  • yaaay!!!!

  • Du bist perfekt mit dem "ch" sehr gut!

  • describe how to use the sounds such as 'ch' etc with how kids in english speaking countries pronounce animal noises, such as as hissing.... you will find good examples if you think aobut it

  • @Diabolous3x I tried to do so in my follow-up video about the German R (and "raspy CH").

  • I'm trying to learn German on my own, this video is really helpful. Thank you!

  • Thank you. This is very helpful and well done.

  • My German professors always pronounce "s" like the American "s", however the lab audio we use pronounces it like the American "z". They're both from Germany so I thought maybe it was a regional thing but now I'm confused. Are they wrong?

  • I have to ask, is"der" pronounced as "dah"?

  • @ihatelifejosemartine "der" sounds pretty much like English "dare".

  • @itekisan Thank you very much!

  • How to pronounce the letter combination "eihen" or "iehen". "i::en" !?

  • @gugocappet "eihen" is like the English letters "I N", "iehen" like "E N".

  • @itekisan Thanks!

  • Thank you i have subscribed.

  • This a great and concise demonstration with an excellent explanation. Thanks!

  • how do you pronounce the word jetzt?

  • Just like you would pronounce "yetst".

  • got it :D

  • Thank you Itekisan you helped my pronunciation and I'm waiting patiently your next video.

  • Danke

  • thanks

  • do we pronounce the CH in schlecht the same as in ich....dunno but i feel it is more like in buch...though it fellows e...

  • The proper way is like in ich. Only some few dialects violate this rule (Hessian, Swiss, Dutch).

  • I really appreciate what you did, indeed it help me a lot. I hope you can post more video like this so I could have ht fluency in your language. I'm looking forward on it.

  • its Z not zed

  • *rolleyes* Z is pronounced zee in the US, but almost everywhere else it is pronounced zed!

  • How do you pronouce Dämmerung and Götterdämmerung? Thanks :]

  • With "dam a rong" and "gurta dam a rong" (stress the first syllable) you get quite close. The details (pronunciation of the individual letters, esp R and the vowels) the video should help.

  • @itekisan i thought ä is pronounced like /ɛ/ ?

  • @kanerva84 It depends on whether it is a short vowel or a long vowel.

  • actually u want to say dammit and godammit which is totally stupid in german nobody says i and dämmerung is when in the early evening when it starts to be dark göterdämemrung doesn´t exist

  • Um.. no god of twilights and twilight douchebag..

  • Well done!! Your English is indeed quite good! with a slight Deutch accent, but that adds class (I think). Great bit of help for we whom are attempting to learn proper German pronounciations.. Vielen Dank!

  • tu francais? si oui ton accent é popire serieu : P, merci lo

  • I'm German. And although I'm learning French, I'm still at the basics. (However I could understand what you wrote. Even though "si" and "popire" look a bit like typos to me, just by gut feeling.)

  • Ok just checked the words, "si" looked wrong to me because I speak a bit Italian, where it is "se". But I cannot find "popire" neither in my French dictionary book nor on the internet. I assume it shall mean "quite".

  • @itekisan ya thats pretty much it lol, kind of slang it was sorryse, tank u for ur answer

  • The video was a bit slow, but the lesson was Excellent. Ausgezeichnet! :D

  • grazie per il video

  • Non c'è di che! ;D

  • Does the R sound different at the begining of a word for example Raten(tongue) than in Ruhe?:/ or was it just the vowels?:/ its really hard for me to learn German when my first language is Spanish then i have to translate to English and it takes time :) Muy bueno el video(very good video)

  • Gracias! ;) (I speak some Italian, and can understand most of Spanish therefore. But I don't really speak it however.)

    I don't think the R sounds different by rule in different words. It may just happen to be modified by the sounds of the adjacent letters / phonemes. What do you mean by "Raten(tongue)"? The Verb "raten" is "to guess", the noun "die Rate" is "the rate" or "the installment", while "the tongue" is "die Zunge".

  • haha. i must look like a fool trying to write and speak German. well thank you, you answer my question. Hasta la luego:)

  • I think you give the best German classes in Youtube...Do you know any websites for practicing german with people?

  • Websites for practicing German? Hm... what I do with foreign languages (when I have time *sigh*), I go to big chat systems. This may be text chats online, or voicechats to 3D chats, like IMVU or Second Life. It takes some time also there to find learner's groups, but so far I usually always found someone (in my case for Italian, for instance). But I also once found on Second Life (that I only used for a week) a regular English learners course. German ones should exist, too, I guess.

  • Vielen Dank Itekisan! Das wäre super, wenn Du dazu ein Video über die deutsche Sprachmelodie machen würdest!

  • Sprachmelodie? Also ich glaube, da ist es wohl besser, wenn Du Dir einfach deutsche Spielfilme anschaust, oder besser noch: einfach mit Deutschen redest (Voicechat oder als Tourist das Land besuchend), und Dir solche Feinheiten dann abhörst.

  • Bei mir geht's nicht, ich muss es gezielt lernen. Mit Sprachmelodie meine ich viell. eher Betonung, z.b. es wird in der Regel die erste Silbe betont wie in "Montag", die Vorsilben werden aber nie betont wie in "gesehen", die Endungen wie "-chen, -ung, -innen" auch nicht, in den Verben mit untrennbaren Partikeln "be-, emp-, ent-, etc." werden nicht betont im Gegensatz zu den Verben mit trennbaren Partikeln (wie "vorgelesen"). Das sind ein Paar Regeln, es gibt sicher noch Andere..

  • Der "h" ist auch ganz interessant: wenn man z.B. "näher" sagt, wird er nicht ausgesprochen, weil es von "nah" kommt, aber z.B. in "daher" wird der "h" ausgesprochen, da es ursprunglich zwei verschiedene Wörter sind, ansonsten wird der "h" Miete vom Wort nicht ausgesprochen wie z.B. in "verstehen". Ja ich bin gerade voll drin!

  • Stimmt alles, aber eine Korrektur bitte: Buchstaben sind immer sächlich im Deutschen, also: DAS H!

  • Danke, ich werde es mir merken.

  • Guten tag. !

  • Man, this is great stuff!

  • 非常感謝!這對我剛接觸這語言非常有用,我學起來在發音上還是非­常吃力ˊˋ

  • Mandarin?

  • Thank you so much, this was usefull...

  • Is there any difference in letter G pronunciation in words like TAG or Neunzig?

  • Yes, the ending -ig often is pronounced as if it was written -ich, see my follow up video on this very issue.

  • Thank you.

  • Your English sounds very English! You don't have a german accent when speaking English, you sound really posh!

  • Echt gutes Tutorial! :)

    Zum Glück kann ich diese Sprache schon! xD

    Good luck to you all in speaking german! :)

  • I can't pronounce words with umlauts. I always get them wrong. It's a pain in the ass.

  • Umlaute scare the hell out of me.

  • i bookmarked your lesson.

    very helpful

  • 3:06: you got that right, friend.

    thanks for the post

  • RY: The Umlaut o is not easy. You have to round your lips while saying 'ey' and tighten the back throat muscles.

  • Comment removed

  • cool. you said that the letter is voiced when it comes before a vowel. but that's not always the case it it? what about a word like 'wachsen'? would the 's' be voiced there?

  • > what about a word like 'wachsen'?

    > would the 's' be voiced there?

    I'm sure I didn't cover any and all rules and exceptions. After a plosive, the S is unvoiced (as in "wachsen"), unless the plosive is part of a prefix (eg "Absicht" = Ab-Sicht) etc.

  • ah ha! cool! that's so great to know!

  • great! i like particularly the "yes" trick, this guy is awsome!!

  • the "s" in english is also voiced Z and S soud alike. That's a mistake that geman speakers always do.

  • Hm I looked some words up with WordWeb. It seems that the s in English is voiced before a vowel, but unvoiced before a consonant. I think I do that automatically correct in actual speaking, don't I?

  • fantastische Erklärung

    abonniert!

  • Hallo! Dein Video hat mir sehr geholfen! danke!

  • you are really a great master of teaching of german...you with this vid you have spoken around 25 words that i can learn...but in other web sites on youtube i lost my time with teachers that spends 10 minutes speaking bullshit in order to tell you that "ich liebe dich " means i love you or "guten tag" means good day or "ich habe kopftwhel..ich brauche ein artz" means i have headache i need a doctor..and i loose my fucking time..but with your teachings i spend very well my time. congratulations

  • Very good video. One of the few here on youtube with lingistic knowledge.

  • this was perfect. thanks

  • Thanks, this tutorial was very useful

  • parabéns... muito bom...

  • Vielen Dank! :*

  • I actually love this, You helped be out with a ton of the pronunciations. Most of the videos online say I will have trouble with 'ch,' which is true in my case, but your video really helps. Thanks.

  • So wait, let me get this straight. Wald would sound more like "Vahlt," am I correct?

  • > Wald would sound more like "Vahlt," am I correct?

    Almost, because the ah would be pronounced as a long A, but it should be short in Wald.

  • perfect! thanks xD

  • im from german ,its simply ;-)

    the next sentence is in german

    (deutsch is wirklich einfach ,

    wenn man es kann)

  • what does unvoiced mean?

  • it means that when you press your fingers against your throat you don't feel vibration like you would when saying a letter like "r" or "e".

  • Human speaking basically consists of two basic components: using the vocal cords to create humming sounds of various pitches (voiced part) and using the tongue, lips and lower jaw to modulate the airflow hiss (unvoiced part).

  • Ganze leicht.

  • 5 Stars

    Great help and I'll be looking for the next vid!

  • Danke! it helped me big..

  • This was very helpful! :)

  • Bei Ruhe wars vielleicht ein bisschen übertrieben, stimmt schon XD

  • thank you very helpful

    Am i not supposed to hear a difference between the long E and the long I?

  • exatly what im looking for.. thanks..

  • Wunderbar!! Du sollst ein Lehrer sein! Danke sehr!.....This helps me allot. You explained this very well, thank you!!

  • THANK YOU so much, VERY USEFUL ( from Italy)

  • Ich möchte Deutsch lernen. By the way, ich bin mit Google für meine Übersetzungen.

  • Thank you!

  • danke!

    du hast schöne augen!

  • very good video

  • Du siehst lecker aus! ;)

  • danke danke danke!!!!!!!!!!

    im trying to learn deutsch and this video helped SO MUCH!

  • wow i thought it was gonna be easy to learn german but it semms pretty hard.

  • Easy to learn German? So far I've only heard it is one of the harder languages to learn. Especially the grammar (lots of rules and even more exceptions) uses to drive learners a bit crazy.

  • I agree, great voice for commericals and other things.... ;)

    Thanks for the help!

  • your voice is awesome for commercials

  • Gday mate,

    Have only just started learning german and this has proven to be very helpful for me, it really is a credit to you. I really appreciate it mate

    Thanks again,

    Daly

  • Danke sehr!!! Helps me alot. Mein Deutsch ist jetzt nicht so gut, aber ich will es verbessern. Vielen Dank! Hoffentlich geht alles gut bei dir.

  • Danke, ja, alles ok hier. :)

    Und Deine Sätze waren perfekt. *thumbsup*

  • thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanx!

  • but how to get which word to say with long a,u,i and which one with short a,u,i?

  • Well I think there are no actual rules - it is a not written part of the word. Compare Arabic or Hebrew, where vowels are usually omitted. They belong to the word, but you need to learn them before to be even able to read the word. :(

  • SOME rules however exist:

    - most vowels are short

    - vowels before a double consonant (ss, rr, nn ...) are always short (the consonant is only sounded once!)

    - vowels before an H are always long (the H is called a "Dehnungs-Hah" in this case, from "dehnen" = "to stretch") (eg "der Ruhm" = "the glory" vs "der Rum" = "the rum")

    - you will most likely never see an "IH" - the I is (don't ask me why) lengthened with the E: "die Wiese" = "the meadow" sounds like "dih Wihse"

  • Doubling vowels (the normal way in Dutch to lengthen vowels) is quite rare in German:

    "der Aal" = "the eel", "der Tee" = "the tea", "der Zoo" = "the zoo"

  • hey thanks it helped,dont know how right but I was trying to pronounce it the same way u did, now I've got to remember it :D..just one question, I got how to pronounce wald, like v in very, I guess, ya? but should I pronounce w in "wollen" "will" the same way?

  • Well, yes, the German W always sounds the same.